F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography

The American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, a legendary figure of the 1920s,
was an extremely observant artist, a beautiful writer, and an exceptional
craftsman. His tragic life was ironically similar to his romantic art.

Fitzgerald's younger years

On September 24, 1896, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born into an
Irish Catholic family in St. Paul, Minnesota. His mother was from a
wealthy family, and his father, Edward, was a furniture manufacturer.
After Edward's business failed, he was employed by Proctor and
Gamble, and the family transferred to Buffalo, New York. The family
lived for some years in Buffalo and Syracuse; but in 1908, when
Fitzgerald's father lost his job, they returned to St. Paul. For
the most part, Fitzgerald was privately educated; he attended Newman
School in Hackensack, New Jersey, from 1911 to 1913 and worked on the
school paper.

Fitzgerald enrolled at Princeton University in 1913. There, he worked on
The Princeton Tiger,
a magazine published by the university. He also wrote for
Princeton's Triangle Club, which was a distinguished organization
that put on musicals. Because of ill health and low grades, he left the
university in 1915. He returned to Princeton in 1916 but left a year
later without a degree and joined the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant.
Stationed in Alabama in 1918, he met Zelda Sayre, then eighteen years
old; he would marry her a few years later. After he left the army he
took an advertising job for a brief period. Back home in St. Paul, he
finished his first novel,
This Side of Paradise,
which was published in 1919, and that same year he had remarkable
success placing nine short stories in leading magazines.

First publications

Upon publication of
This Side of Paradise
(1920), Fitzgerald married Sayre in New York City. Of this period he
later recalled riding up Fifth Avenue in a cab—young, rich,
famous, and in love (he might easily have added
handsome)—suddenly bursting into tears because he knew he would
never be so happy again. He was right. Despite great earnings and fame,
he and Zelda lived grandly and lavishly—but tragically.

A daughter was born in 1921 after the couple had spent some time in
Europe. When Fitzgerald's second novel,
The Beautiful and the Damned
(1922), and a collection of short stories,
Tales of the Jazz Age
(1922), sold well, they rented a house on Long Island and ran into debt
because of their reckless spending. Fitzgerald attempted to recover by
writing a play,
The Vegetable
(1923), but it was unsuccessful. The Fitzgeralds went to Europe for
over two years. The high points of this trip were publication of
The Great Gatsby
(1925) and the beginning of Scott's friendship with Ernest
Hemingway (1899–1961). In 1927 Fitzgerald went to Hollywood on
his first movie assignment. Afterward the Fitzgeralds again went
overseas several times.

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Zelda's first major nervous breakdown, in 1930, and her following
treatment in a Swiss clinic became the basis for Fitzgerald's
next novel,
Tender Is the Night
(1934). Zelda spent the rest of her life in and out of treatment
centers, and Fitzgerald's own life ran a similar unfortunate
course.

Analysis of the novels

This Side of Paradise
(1920), an autobiographical (having to do with one's life story)
novel, tells of the youth and early manhood of a Princeton
undergraduate. The climax occurs when he shifts his devotion from
football to literature, while at the same time he
grows in character. This work struck a nerve in the reading public,
chiefly for its new type of heroine—the "flapper,"
a young woman who goes against the idea that a woman must be stricter in
her morals and behavior than a man. She smokes, drinks, dances, and is
considered to be somewhat low in her character and conduct.

The Beautiful and the Damned
(1922) deals with a couple who is concerned with only themselves. Tony
Patch, grandson of a millionaire, and his beautiful wife live
extravagantly on the expectations of Tony's inheritance, but the
grandfather discovers Tony's alcoholism and wastefulness and
disinherits him; however, after the grandfather dies, the will is
broken. Ironically, the inheritance only worsens the destruction of
Tony's morals. As with most of Fitzgerald's novels, the
autobiographical elements are fairly obvious.

The Great Gatsby
(1925) is an American classic, generally regarded as
Fitzgerald's finest work. It contains the themes that pass
through all of his fiction: the hardened indifference of wealth, the
hollowness of the American success myth, and the sleaziness of the
wealthy lifestyle. It is the story of Jay Gatz, a successful, vaguely
disreputable man, who has a background of poverty and has altered his
name to "Gatsby." He emerges as morally superior to the
people who take advantage of his parties and the reckless rich whom he
so hopelessly imitates. Gatsby dies unrealistically attempting to
reclaim his former love, Daisy.
The Great Gatsby
is a major contribution to the writing work of the twentieth century.

The theme of
Tender Is the Night
(1934; later restructured by Malcolm Cowley) is parasitism—the
health of one person gained through harm to the other—and the
facts bear an unmistakable resemblance to Scott and Zelda's
marriage.

The Last Tycoon
(1941), published after Fitzgerald's death—after Edmund
Wilson put it together from Fitzgerald's unfinished
manuscript—is the story of a movie producer. Though Wilson calls
it Fitzgerald's most mature work, it has received very little
critical attention.

Short stories

Many regard Fitzgerald's short stories as his best work. The
titles of his collections are a representation of the spirit of the
times.
Flappers and Philosophers
(1921) contains "The Off-Shore Pirate" and "The
Ice Palace."
Tales of the Jazz Age
(1922) includes "May Day" and "The Diamond as Big
as the Ritz." The best-known pieces in
All the Sad Young Men
(1926) are "Winter Dreams," a basic example of
Fitzgerald's romantic vision, and "The Rich Boy."
Fitzgerald's final collection,
Taps at Reveille
(1935), includes "Babylon Revisited," perhaps his most
widely anthologized (stories written by different authors that are
collected and published together) story.

Last years

Fitzgerald earned over four hundred thousand dollars between 1919 and
1934, but he and Zelda lived so expensively that they barely managed to
cover their bills. When
Tender Is the Night
failed to excite interest, financial problems became critical; by 1937
Fitzgerald owed forty thousand dollars despite continued earnings from
magazine stories. Zelda had been permanently returned to medical care in
1934; and the years from 1935 to 1937 saw Fitzgerald's
own decline—increasing alcoholism and physical
illness—which he described with emotional openness in articles
that appear in
Esquire
in the mid-1930s.

In 1937 Fitzgerald signed a movie contract at a weekly salary of one
thousand dollars. His relationship with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham
during the last three years of his life is described in her
Beloved Infidel
(1958). After two heart attacks Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940.
Zelda Fitzgerald died in a fire in 1947 at Highland Sanitarium,
Asheville, North Carolina, leaving a novel,
Save Me the Waltz
(1932).